Summary: After almost a week (due to absence) we return to covering and debating recent stories of relevance within our scope
TODAY’S show covers many topics ranging from Google’s new operating system to Microsoft’s slow death in the mobile space. OpenBytes has published the show notes containing some of the topics we ran through.
Summary: Microsoft talks about Vista 8 [sic] and mobile patents rather than existing products, which simply don’t sell so well
A FEW days ago we showed that Vista 7 adoption was actually quite poor, but Microsoft dishonestly reported false figures. The post “Cost-ineffective “7″ Deployment” helps explain why the operating system just doesn’t make sense for a business, based on economic terms:
That looks like -$1250 and you get nothing for the expenditure… How is that cost-effective? Any possible benefit is just a wash, about the same as the last system that you are chucking while still viable. One could go to Debian GNU/Linux and be free of most of these costs. Really. If you can get all your machines to boot PXE, you can slap GNU/Linux onto hard drives in 20 minutes or so and you are done. One re-boot and the system is working, free of malware and not slowing down until there is a hardware or network failure. If the machines are really old, you will be better off using LTSP, a package in many distros these days, to boot them and users run applications and sessions on a powerful new machine that can please dozens at once.
Microsoft understands that Vista 7 adoption will be slow and businesses see no reason to use it. Some might even move to another operating system. In order to “freeze the market” — as Microsoft's Nathan Myhrvold once put it — they are dropping a name as a form of vapourware. They say that the mythical Vista 8 will have an interface called “Wind” but provide no proof:
As of now, all of these are mere rumors as there is no way to confirm any of them. So take them with a pinch of salt.
According to previous leaks from Microsoft, we are two years away from knowing if any of these are true.
Based on this confidential Microsoft document[PDF], Microsoft uses vapourware (speaking about future versions or products that don’t yet exist) only when the competition is too much to bear. In the mobile arena, for example, Linux/Android beats Windows very easily and “Microsoft Doesn’t Expect Windows Phone 7 Sales To Catch Up To iOS or Android Any Time Soon,” says this one headline. Glyn Moody links to this other article where Microsoft continues to avoid answering the question about number of sales. Microsoft carries on collecting more patents because Vista Phony 7 [sic] seems as though it’s not much better than the “KIN”, just better advertised. Microsoft explained that it would use patents to monetise mobile phones and what it means by patents is racketeering [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (demands without disclosure, backed by threats). In the coming years Microsoft will be more of a leech owing to the broken patent law. It’s already happening. █
Summary: Microsoft’s and AttachMSFT’s Mono is being pushed into more platforms to extend the reach of Microsoft APIs whilst abuse of critics like Techrights soars again
THE COMPANY known as AttachMSFT [sic] (formerly Novell) is one we’ll write about extensively in days to come. Basically, not much is happening at Novell these days, but patents were passed to Microsoft while both Mono and Moonlightrear their ugly heads again. Mono is spreading .NET to more proprietary platform (and some which are not proprietary as well) or as OMG!Ubuntu! puts it: “Mono on the iPod, for Android. LLVM and insane amounts of really impressive sounding stuff…”
Impressive to who? Microsoft developers? OMG!Ubuntu! is not the only site which helps Mono right now and after a string of posts from Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza [1, 2, 3] even Phoronixgives it a lip service, sadly not mentioning that parts of Mono are written by Microsoft and licensed by Microsoft (its own software licences) while more efforts are put into supporting Microsoft projects like IronPython, IronRuby, and F#.
The first feature item mentioned by Miguel was support for new languages by Mono on Linux as well as other supported platforms like Mac OS X. We already reported that F# support is going into Mono after Microsoft open-sourced the language, but other languages to be supported by this open-source stack include IronPython, IronRuby, and UnityScript.
As stated earlier in Identi.ca, be sure to check who’s the Mono booster you come across as many work for AttachMSFT or Microsoft, which literally owns parts of Mono (MS-PL-licensed code). Mono boosters are very rude this week. They attack me personally quite a lot and they are threatening people who criticise Mono and inciting others against them. It’s the same old tactics and AttachMSFT employees are behind it. Yes, AttachMSFT (formerly Novell) and Microsoft have almost 100,000 employees, which makes them an able propaganda machine. Pointing out that Mono is a Trojan horse whose purpose to promote Microsoft’s API (with software patents) is a monumental task when facing this huge army of Mono boosters who systematically coordinate suppression of critics. As we said before, “The Biggest Threat Comes from the Inside” and these people have a different agenda. █
“You don’t need to buy the company, just destroy them and then take their business.”
According to the Microsoft Security Response Center, Microsoft will issue 17 Security Bulletins addressing 40 vulnerabilities on Tuesday, December 14. It will also host a webcast to address customer questions the following day.
Two of the vulnerabilities are rated “Critical,” 14 are marked “Important,” and the last one is classified as “Moderate.” All of the Critical vulnerabilities earned their rating through a remote code execution impact, meaning a hacker could potentially gain control of an infected machine. At least eight of the 17 patches will require a restart.
For general security and for more crack-proof systems the US ought to use a program whose source code cannot be ‘leaked’; its visibility alone ought to be proof of confidence. On the desktop, companies like Canonical may be having a bit of a shake-up with this high-level departure, but the US government already works with Red Hat (Red Hat’s stock approaches $50), so putting RHEL (desktop) or Fedora on employees’ PCs would be a wise step now that they try to prevent further leaks, conveniently forgetting that data leaks via the networks more routinely than a CD-ROM/DVD drive is used for this purpose (they wrongly assume only action from the inside). Thus far, Cablegate offers proof that Windows is not secure because of Microsoft’s actions and it also shows that the government knows this. Something should be done. █
Today’s show ends with “Devil’s Best Dress” by Cord Lund. We hope you will join us for future shows and consider subscribing to the show via the RSS feed. You can also visit our archives for past shows. If you have an Identi.ca account, consider subscribing to TechBytes in order to keep up to date. █
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